Haunted: A Collection of Frightening Tales

Unsettled

"Now you're just somebody that I used to know."- Wouter De Backer, Gotye

It's unsettling to see a stranger staring at you from afar in public. What's worse is seeing the same person staring at you down the street from your front porch when you arrive home.

It began as a simple uneasy feeling when I got out of my car. I riffled through my purse, looking for my keys, as I kept my house keys and my car key separate. The hair on the back of my neck defied gravity, lifting itself into the air. I felt this urge to look behind me. I wish I hadn't.

I kept eye contact with the shadowy figure across the street. It was standing under a street lamp, and yet it appeared to be only a shadow. It looked like the same figure I had seen out of the corner of my eye at the office. I blinked, and it made it seem like the figure had gotten closer. Just fractionally, but it scared me all the same. I backed onto my porch and struggled to keep my eyes open. They began to water when I finally found my keys.

The keys rattled into their place. I took them out and patted my hand all over the door until I found the handle. The hinges squeaked. I backed through the doorway, feeling the walls for the light switch. I screamed.

"Jesus H. Christ, Josh. What are you doing here? I thought you were supposed to be at your friend Lucas's house tonight." I said to my son after he gave me a mini heart attack.

"I'm sorry, mother. I didn't mean to scare you." Josh said. He fully exited the corner he was crouched behind and I soon wished that he hadn't. I realized that this was not my son. First, he never calls me mother. Second, he had a vague expression on his face that was pared with a discomforting pea-soup-green that his eyes had taken on. There were no longer any pupils, either. My eyes nearly burst from my skull. I have to get out, I instinctively thought. I reached behind myself for the door handle.

The creature borrowing my son's face used it to growl like nothing I've ever heard before. It didn't sound human or animal; more like an alien. It twisted my son's face into an absolutely deranged smile. It ripped my son's skin apart, stretching and growing until he was twice my size. My son's skin fell off the creature in rags like pieces of clothing, some bits of it remaining on the skeletal and meaty corpse-thing, like most of my son's face. There was a pile of flesh on the floor.

I heard bones crack and saw them shift. I just stood there in silent terror, wanting so much to escape, but feeling like my feet were cemented to the floor. My mouth wrapped itself around a scream. My hand dropped from the handle of the door and my arms went limp. I watched my not-son drip out two sentences through yellowing and sharpening teeth.

"What's wrong, mother? Are you scared?" The voice that came from my son's contorted and viciously mutilated face was guttural and low. It chuckled with my son's mouth.

My chest expanded and collapsed. With blurring vision, I closed my eyes. I shook my head from side to side, willing this to be a dream. It wasn't.

When I opened my eyes, my vision had cleared up. My not-son was hunch over, it's borrowed face a centimeter from mine. His nostrils swelled and shrank. Hot and death-smelling breath cooked my face like the sun. To my thankfulness, the thing wearing my son backed up a fraction. To my horror, it stuck out my son's tongue and caught my full attention, even more so than it already had. The stolen tongue turned gray and acquired rotted-out holes. The tip of it ripped down the middle and the halves seemed to sharpen into two bloody prongs. It looked serpentine and the terrible thing grew. The thing's tongue licked the edge of my nose.

"She started mumbling strange thing about seeing something outside. She looked at me and began to scream. Just endless screaming shaking for approximately five minutes. I had to cover my ears when I tried to console her. That's when mother collapsed. I think she thought I was a monster or something," I said. The policeman nodded his head and clicked his pen shut. The notepad flipped closed. I began to exit, feeling triumphant. Another officer approached me, asking where I was going. I said I was going to go and lie down; the stress was getting to me. She said that I needed to stay put and that they were going to take me to the station for further questioning.

"Guys, you've got to watch this!" I turned on the TV and Michael, David, and Joyce slithered their way from the kitchen.

"This better be good, Ally. I've got serious munchies," David said.

"Don't worry, its super crazy. Now watch and try not to fall asleep, my weed inhaling brother." I smiled. His pot head friends busted out laughing and the couch seemed to swallow them whole. Me and David plopped down in it ourselves. The news story I wanted to show them came up on screen and everyone shut up.

"The woman was found by her son, said to be murmuring to herself about monsters. Her son told police on the scene that she collapsed and he called 911 when she wasn't breathing... what? Hold on a second." The newscaster presses her finger to her ear. Glancing back and forth from the camera to somewhere off in the distance, she looks terrified. The newswoman turns her head away from the camera entirely and looks back at it a few moments later.

"We've just received breaking news. The son mentioned earlier... he was found dead near the edge of a creek that lies between the towns of Seven Points and Tool, Texas," she continued. A blurry picture of the body popped up next to her head. There was no skin on him. "The boy, Josh Morra, is said to previously have never been to Texas, having lived here in Georgia his whole life, according to his Grandparents." She put her finger to her ear again and her eyes widened.

"We have more breaking news. Josh Morra was reported to have asked his mother to go to a friend's house, but the friend he was supposed to visit says he never showed up. We have just received a report from the coroner on site. Morra has been reported to have been dead at least three days, long before he talked to police. The friend of Morra and Morra's Grandparents have confirmed that they haven't heard from him in at least a week. They have also stated that this was very odd for him because he would text his friend daily and he was very close with his Grandparents, with whom he did the same."

My brother and I looked at each other with wide eyes as the news went to commercial.

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Thanks for reading, to those that have made it this far. Are you scared yet? Let me know in the comments. I love hearing from you guys, I mean it. :)

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~Happy Reading~